Toshiba said to be nearing deal to buy Fujitsu's hard drive business

Hitachi may be out of the picture (if it was ever actually in the picture to begin with), but it looks like Toshiba is now very close to buying Fujitsu's hard drive business in a deal that's reported to be worth between 30 and 40 billion yen, or anywhere from $335 to $447 million. That would make Toshiba the world's largest supplier of hard drives for laptops and, according to Reuters, it could be all but a done deal by the end of the month, if a supposed meeting between company execs planned for this week goes as expected. The deal wouldn't include Fujitsu's plant in Nagano Prefecture, however, or the hard drive operations of its Yamagata Fujitsu subsidiary -- those would apparently be sold off separately for some extra cash if Fujitsu decides to exit the hard drive business altogether.

[ran @ Jan 14th 2009 10:05PM]

Toshiba is a very big company. The format war was nothing.

[Chery @ Jan 14th 2009 10:21PM]

"a deal that's reported to be worth between 30 and 40 billion yen"

Damn Engadget, you should have left it at that. By converting it, you've somehow (I feel)... embarrassed them.

[Temple @ Jan 14th 2009 10:54PM]

huh? why?

[mupdadoo @ Jan 14th 2009 10:34PM]

Toshiba are the only ones without a netbook

Mup da doo didda po mo gub bidda be dat tum muhfugen bix nood cof bin dub ho muhfugga

[Indefinite Implosion @ Jan 14th 2009 10:57PM]

well said!
here here
also...
yay more hard drives for all! par-tee!
"it's raining hard drives hallelujah"
sorry i'll stop

[someone @ Jan 15th 2009 12:27AM]

who said toshiba doesn't have a netbook?

you might want to search google for toshiba nb100 c02

[ran @ Jan 14th 2009 10:49PM]

You failed.

[Indefinite Implosion @ Jan 14th 2009 10:59PM]

no, he most certainly succeeded at having the 2nd comment on this article.
However he did fail at life...

[Brandon @ Jan 14th 2009 11:46PM]

This absolutely sucks. Fujitsu's modern 2.5" drives are great and many data recovery companies regard them as some of the best built consumer drives there. Toshiba's -- among the worst. I work at a computer repair center, and we have twice as many bad Toshiba drives than all of the other hard drives combined.

It's quite pathetic. Anytime we get a laptop in with a Toshiba HD, it's pretty easy to know it's a Toshiba. Grind, grind, grind. Click click click.

[MechaDEVO @ Jan 15th 2009 12:28AM]

I have had to replace two broken hard drives for friends' laptops...both were Toshiba hard drives. Ick.

[xconan @ Jan 15th 2009 12:55AM]

Were those the IBM/Toshiba travelstar series that were defective? I have a Toshiba hd prior to the IBM buyout and they still run good... So it could probably be the IBM/Toshiba QC problems.

[Brandon @ Jan 15th 2009 1:18AM]

@xconan

What IBM buyout? IBMs hard drive division was bought by Hitachi.

[John B @ Jan 15th 2009 12:03AM]

Toshiba is only a fraction of the entire conglomerate. They are owned by (or part of) a very, very large company that is quite diverse in its offerings, most of which deal with the nuclear power industry. They lost a lot of money on the HD DVD deal, true, but back then I calculated that even if Toshiba went completely under that would only account for something like 9% of the whole conglomerate. Considering that Toshiba itself is quite a diverse company, HD DVD was a hit, but they were in no real financial danger.

[John B @ Jan 15th 2009 12:04AM]

Second comment, first loser.

[aznofazns @ Jan 15th 2009 12:12AM]

i lol'd at that video..."why would osama bin laden be hiding in a cave in... in... somewhere" hahahaha

[xconan @ Jan 15th 2009 1:35AM]

@Brandon

Sorry, must have remembered it wrong. So much for pulling late nighters it affects the memory.

[AR @ Jan 15th 2009 2:26AM]

Having worked for a data recovery company, I can say that we didn''t see a lot of Fujitsu 2.5" drives that come in for repair and are very reliable. However, their market share and saturation is very low which may also skew the data as to why data recovery companies see them less than other makes. Toshiba drives for the most part are not better or worse than the industry average. I personally have a Toshiba 2.5' 80GB in my laptop now which has been churning along fine for 5 years now. All drives by any manufacturer will fail, it's not a question. Just make it a practice to keep your data backed up no matter who manufactured your media.

[Shinigami @ Jan 15th 2009 10:14AM]

HD-HDD is coming...

[Like_A_Glove @ Jan 16th 2009 1:51AM]

Judging by the pace things evolving, HDD business will soon become "nobody's business" business. Why bother buying smaller potential "nobody's business" business while you're with bigger potential "nobody's business" business? especially after IBM sold its HDD business and did great in other businesses and under current economic conditions, there's a hard and real business of out of business when merging businesses?...... Well...... It's none of my business...... so, I may never know.